Deliverance

Synopsis

What did happen on the Cahulawassee River?

Intent on seeing the Cahulawassee River before it's turned into one huge lake, outdoor fanatic Lewis Medlock takes his friends on a river-rafting trip they'll never forget into the dangerous American back-country.

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That part where Jon Voight second guesses who he just shot thinking he sees real teeth in the mouth. He feels the face, plays with the dentures that come out and he quietly sighs with relief. Finally something went right. Just an incredible little ice breaking moment of clarity. The way the characters grapple with the enormity of their situation, it becomes such a heavy burden, one almost big enough to slip out of their control. When Ronny Cox draws the line with the first murder. Where was his Oscar that year? Such a heavy scene, you're just sweating with them along every decision. Staggering film.

A journey into the deep south, up in those tree laden mountain regions is like a trip to a country within a country. That's old America right there, where men are men and brothers marry their sister. A protective community full of their own traditions who don't like visitors as much as visitors don't like to venture inside.

Four men are delivered by the Cahulawassee river into a redefined test of manhood far removed from what was supposed to be an overnight trip through the rapids. It initially feels as if the danger sits at the start and ending of their journey, entrusting locals who are suspicious of each others motives. We expect that trouble will await them when they…

"Deliverance," John Boorman's stomach-churning and now-iconic observation of the savagery of nature, man, and conscience is a film built upon and defined by its conflicts. The conflict of man versus nature gives way to the conflict of man versus man and, in turn, man versus self and, finally, nature versus man. It is a poetic progression of the how these conflicts and the destruction imparted by human beings leads only to human destruction. Boorman couches this progression in a heavy-toned, chilling adventure-drama, but the thematic poetry of its conflicts is writ large throughout.

Revolving around four friends who take a canoe trip down a remote river before it is damned, the four soon find themselves damned. Traveling into an off-kilter…

A whirling whirlpool of crystal clear cultural reflections, Deliverance is a brooding, boundary breaking journey down the river to hell. Despite his British ethnicity, in 1972 John Boorman proved his ability to capture the unrelenting horrors of the cantankerous South better than many American filmmakers could. He drew constant allegories on a world that we change as much as it changes us, embedded in the story of four businessmen from Atlanta, slowly regretting how they left their suburban, concrete jungle for a real one.

Poet James Dickey deserves copious credit for his source material and Southern insight, if it hadn't been for his novel and screenplay Boorman would've directed a different picture. Dickey's dialogue provides a realistic perspective on an…

Ten years ago when I was still into that sort of thing, a book called Wild at Heart swept through the evangelical community. The book told a story of how men in today's world have lost touch with the wildness and masculinity that God made them to embody. This loss means that men feel a hole in their souls, a "great wound", if I remember the title correctly. Part of the solution included getting out into the wilderness. I remember our church mens' group taking a canoe /camping trip in spring 2004, a trip heavily influenced by that book's message.

Watching this film, I remember that canoe trip. We were certainly never in…

The film that made Burt Reynolds a household name and dueling banjos a hillbilly anthem. We lost Burt in 2018 but that creepy bango lick will live on forever. A career defining performance by Ned Beatty for his portrayal of a farm animal.

Seriously depressing. Incredibly harsh, very well directed and performed. Everything I was hoping for really, and one that’ll probably haunt me for quite some time. Can’t wait to return to this sometime.

Masterful and deeply problematic all at once. The shock factor hasn't translated to 2018 (not even that scene), but the creeping dread that precedes and succeeds the film's most visceral moments has.

Southern Gothic film and literature has become a focus of mine. My general rule is that the good ones take us inside the lives of the impoverished and broken South and make us empathize for those we find there, even if we disapprove of what those people do, while the bad ones exoticize them. Deliverance is the exception to the rule, in that it's marvelously constructed and thematically driven, but views the "mountain people" it portrays as wholly alien-- a different species from our protagonists. This complicates the film's legacy in my mind, but its staying power, its ability to captivate 47 years later, is still undeniable.